


i will follow you into the dark

by JasperIsAFanboy



Series: The Afternoon Light Cuts to Size [24]
Category: Blood Drive (TV)
Genre: Angst with no happy ending, Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia, Heavy Angst, Hospitals, M/M, Suicide, creuzfeldt-jakob disease, i think this might be the saddest thing ive ever written, oh lord this one's a doozy cats, the Worst Timeline(tm)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 05:31:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15406053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JasperIsAFanboy/pseuds/JasperIsAFanboy
Summary: or: prions are nasty buggers.pls check the tags before you read.





	i will follow you into the dark

**Author's Note:**

> so a couple weeks ago dilan and i were talking abt prions (u know, as u do), and as such discussions naturally go we started wondering abt what if rasher got a prion infection. so i trotted down to the library, did a little bit o reading, decided it would be entirely too sad to write and that i wouldn't, and then wrote it anyway bc apparently i hate happiness ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ also dilan sent me a horrendously sad poss scenario for how it would work and i used that as a springboard so thx bby this one's ur fault <3 consider this an au to our main series bc i'll be damned if this is how it ends. i'd have posted it on its own, but it references stuff in the main series sooo.
> 
> also my pedantry insists i mention that i couldn't research this as much as i would normally do, bc reading abt creuzfeldt-jakob disease almost gave me a panic attack :) and i mean that literally, the only reason i can say 'almost' is bc i realized what was happening and closed the book i was reading and left the library. so if there're any inaccuracies in here, sorry not sorry but i'm not fixing them.
> 
> the title references a death cab for cutie song. (see i listen to bands that aren't darkest of the hillside thickets)

The sound of the machines no longer registers in Julian’s hearing anymore, he’s gotten so used to them. One to track Rasher’s heartbeat and blood pressure and pulse, a ventilator, the IV administering fluids and anti-convulsants and mood stabilizers. He’s on oxygen, administered via a tube in his nose. They had to shave his face for it, and Julian doesn’t like seeing him without the goatee. His septum ring is gone too. Aside from the tattoos, he hardly looks like himself. Julian had gotten so used to his piercings, his stupid goatee, his still-terrible taste in fashion. Julian never stopped making fun of the tiger-stripe T-shirt until it became one of the only shirts Rasher could put on by himself, once the disease robbed him of the dexterity in his long fingers. Seeing him in a hospital gown, tucked in bed and hooked totubes and covered in bruises from seizures that made him fling his bony limbs into hard objects… it’s almost as awful as the idea of him dy—

Julian can’t finish the thought. He swallows hard. After a moment, he rises from his chair and touches the back of Rasher’s hand, lying on the bedclothes. Rasher’s head moves, turns towards him. His eyes open. Without the maw, which vanished like it had never existed when the Scar closed upon Heart’s defeat, his eyes have gone back to the dark brown they’d been when he and Julian met, those years ago on the side of a lonely desert highway. Julian has spent the last five years waking up to those eyes. For a wrenching long moment that only lasts a heartbeat, Julian sees no recognition in Rasher’s gaze. Then Rasher smiles and turns his hand over to take Julian’s in a weak grasp.

“Julian. Hey,” he half-croaks, half-whispers. Julian forces a smile onto his face.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Julian says. He dreads the day Rasher wakes and doesn’t say his name. “How are you feeling?”

Rasher looks away, towards the window. “Tired,” he says. “I’m so tired. All I do is sleep, but I…” He trails off, his face contorting slightly. “Damn it. The word, I can’t fucking…” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I hate this.”

Julian holds his hand tighter, strokes his too-gaunt cheek with his free hand. “I know, darling, I know.” Rasher turns his face to Julian’s palm. Julian can see new lines around his eyes, his mouth, deep and numerous as an old man’s. He’s not even forty. Julian swallows against a hard knot in his throat. They’d had five good years with Heart gone and the race defunct, five years of hunting and killing and loving.

Five years. So short, so painfully short.

The nurses had taken Rasher for an MRI that morning, to check the progress of the damage. Julian had waited in the room as he always does; he refuses to look at the results anymore. He’d seen the first few, each one harder than the last. Seeing Rasher’s clever brain increasingly riddled with holes was more than he could handle. It had seemed to take longer than usual, and Julian had been an anxious wreck by the time the neurologist found him. What if something had happened, what if Rasher had died down there, away from Julian? He started pacing in the hallway. But the squeaking of the gurney wheel made him turn, and there at the end of the hall was the neurologist, leading two nurses wheeling Rasher’s gurney. Rasher himself was unconscious.

Julian’s heart had dropped. Had they induced the coma already? Without giving Julian a chance to say—

He strode up to the neurologist in high dudgeon, calling on every ounce of piss and vinegar he’d ever had when he dealt with Heart, ready to rip the neurologist in half for putting Rasher out for what little remained of his life without telling Julian first. The neurologist didn’t bother stopping him, just waved the nurses ahead.

“He had a seizure in the chamber,” she said without preamble. “We’re lucky he didn’t injure himself. We had to sedate him to finish the MRI.”

Every bit of defiance and anger left Julian. It was the second seizure Rasher had had in the last twenty-four hours. He leaned against the wall, put a hand over his face, then over his mouth. He bit his lip hard, tasted copper. He looked at the neurologist.

“How… how long does he…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

The neurologist shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you need to start preparing for the worst. We can induce a coma so that he won’t—“

“I know.” Some little fragments of memory, some remnants of his past life, had come to Julian’s mind when the doctors diagnosed Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease, just enough for him to be properly terrified for his lover. The victim was put into a medically induced coma near the end so that they could pass away peacefully. He’s been dreading that moment since the diagnosis.

The neurologist put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“When… when should we…” Julian bit his lip again, this time in frustration with himself. Speaking was his life, once. “When should we induce the coma?”

“The sooner the better.”

Julian felt a sob threatening to claw its way up his throat. He shook his head, though whether in denial that the coma was necessary (he knew it was), at not wanting to make the decision right then (he didn’t), or at everything in general he couldn’t say for sure. The neurologist patted his shoulder.

“We’ll discuss it later,” she said. "I'll give you some time with him. He should wake up in a few hours, if he's going to wake up at all."

That had been five hours ago. The afternoon sun now slants across the hospital floor, touches the edge of Rasher’s bed.

They will never know when or how he was infected. Creuzfeldt-Jakob can take up to fifteen years to manifest even the most subtle symptoms. But even if they had known, there was nothing to be done. Creuzfeldt-Jakob has no treatments, no cure. Rasher was doomed even before the mood swings, the insomnia, the increasing loss of motor control. He developed a tremor a month in, and some whisper of his doctoring days had given Julian fear to see Rasher’s formerly neat cuts turn sloppy. Six months in, and Rasher couldn’t even hold his knife. A door slamming sent him into convulsions. He’s been hospitalized and bedbound for a month now.

“Julian?” Rasher’s voice isn’t any stronger than it was when he woke up, but it pulls Julian from his woolgathering like nothing else on earth could. “I want you to. To. Shit. When you say you’ll do something, no matter what…”

“Promise?”

“Yes. Promise me something.”

“Anything. Whatever you ask, I’ll do it.”

The pain in Rasher’s eyes is beyond heartbreaking. “Kill me,” he whispers. “Please. I can’t…”He draws a shuddering breath. “I know I’m dying anyway. But I don’t want it to be because of this.”

Julian’s knees go weak and he leans hard on the bed railing. “Rasher—!”

“I know you can. Please, Julian, please. You promised.”

_I can’t_ , Julian thinks wildly. _I can kill the doctors, the nurses, the other patients. I can kill an orphanage worth of children without batting an eye. I can kill anyone, anywhere, anytime. But I can’t kill you!_

“Rasher, I—“

“You’re the only person I still recognize,” Rasher says. His voice has gone tight and thin, like he’s trying not to cry. “The doctor, the nurses, I see them every day and I have no fucking idea who they are! Every time I see them it’s like meeting them for the first time. The MRI techs introduce themselves every time I’m there, even though they’re there every day, because I don’t recognize them and they know I don’t recognize them! I don’t—“ His voice breaks. He swallows several times and stares up at the ceiling. His eyes are shining. Finally he says, in a voice like shattered glass, “I don’t want to lose you too.”

Julian covers his mouth but it does nothing to stifle the sob that breaks loose.

Five short years.

“I-I don’t care how,” Rasher says. His voice is barely audible over the machines. “Smother me, poison me, break my fucking neck, I don’t care. Just. Please, Julian, please. I see how everyone looks at me. They know what I have. They pity me and I can’t stand it. Please, Julian.”

How could he ask this of Julian? How could he beg for death at Julian’s hand? He knows how high he is in Julian’s regard, how Julian would burn down the world for him, how he could ask anything of Julian and he’d give it, because he’s the only person in the world Julian loves as much as himself. But to ask this? Even in mercy?

The heart monitor is beeping rapidly in time with Rasher’s heart, which Julian can practically see pounding in his thin chest. He’d actually started to fill out before the decline started, but now he’s lost that weight and then some. The reality of Rasher’s suffering imposes itself on Julian. He’s asking Julian to kill him because Julian is the only one who would. Julian is the only one who knows, truly knows, how terribly the disease has hurt Rasher and that the damage goes deeper than the holes in his brain. Rasher had been an apex predator once, a man who would hunt the human race to extinction to satisfy his bloodlust. To be reduced to a broken shell of a man confined to a hospital bed,unable to hunt or even to string coherent thoughts together on the bad days, at the mercy of everyone around, to be pitied instead of feared, to go from a wolf to a defanged dog…

Julian releases Rasher’s hand and takes a step back. For a moment, panic floods Rasher’s eyes. He thinks Julian’s going to abandon him. That alone hurts more than anything: Julian would never abandon Rasher. He goes to the cabinet across the room. There are empty syringes in there, he knows. He finds one, unwraps it, tucks it into a waistcoat pocket. Then he goes back. He goes around the bed to the various IVs that run to Rasher’s other hand and arm. The panic in Rasher’s eyes fades quickly, replaced by curiosity and, for the first time in the better part of a year, hope. Julian takes one IV tube between his thumb and forefinger. He stares at his fingertips for a moment, wishes he hadn’t stopped painting them black. It would be appropriate right now.

He looks at Rasher. Rasher’s staring at the IV tube with something like the old hunger, the old desire for death. Rasher’s eyes meet his, and he nods.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

Julian kinks the tube. He holds it for three seconds, long enough for a substantial air bubble to form. He releases the tube. The bubble slides along, inching closer to Rasher’s arm.

“Good-bye, darling,” Julian says, his voice cracked. His vision blurs, and he blinks furiously to clear it. He doesn’t want to miss…

The bubble goes into Rasher’s arm.

Air embolisms are not always fatal. They can be treated, and the pressure can be relieved, and the patient will live. But Rasher’s system is already failing. He can barely even breathe on his own anymore.

The sound of the heart monitor flatlining is the loudest thing Julian’s ever heard.

He wants to break down and give voice to the incredible grief he’d never imagined feeling, a grief so loud and large it’s like an animal tearing him apart inside. But he knows he has no time for grief; doctors and nurses will be arriving any second, summoned by the alarms from Rasher's heart stopping. They won't try to revive Rasher, since he and Julian signed a DNR, but they might try to stop Julian, and he has no intention of leaving this room alive. As fast as he can, Julian rolls up his sleeve. With motions once long-practiced but now beyond rusted from disuse, he finds the vein in his elbow. He takes the empty syringe from his pocket and pulls the plunger back as far as it’ll go. He holds it to his skin, then pauses. He looks at Rasher’s corpse. For the first time, Rasher looks at ease. His brown eyes are closed.

He looks wrong, lying alone.

Julian climbs up next to him, snuggles close. He pushes the needle into his vein and depresses the plunger. He hopes it’ll be enough air to be fatal. He knows this time when he dies, there’s no coming back. When Heart fell the Scar closed, and when it closed he lost his ability to reincarnate. His spare bodies became merely corpses. This is the final death.

He’s never looked forward to anything more in his life.

He puts an arm over Rasher’s waist and tucks his face into the crook of his neck.

The pain in his chest is catastrophic in its intensity, but he can only smile as the world goes dark.


End file.
